Breaking the Word: Getting Back Together

Sunday, September 07, 2025

Getting Back Together

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Readings: Wisdom 9:13-18; Psalm 89 (90):3-6, 12-14, 17; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33

Picture: By andri onet on Unsplash

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. We called it off again last night, but ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. This time I’m telling you… we are never ever getting back together… Does anyone recognise these lines? I suspect a good number of us do. They’re taken from a popular Taylor Swift song. Addressed to an unworthy ex-boyfriend, with whom the singer has been in an on-again, off-again relationship, the song is a declaration that this is the end. We are never ever getting back together. But more than just calling it quits, the song also reveals what the singer is looking for in a steady relationship. The non-negotiable requirements that her ex seems unwilling or unable to meet. Despite repeatedly professing his love for her, he can’t accept the practical implications, the necessary repercussions of love. And by breaking up with him, the singer also reveals something about herself, who she is, what she values.

Relationship and revelation, requirements and repercussions. Don’t we find something similar in our scriptures today? The first reading paints a rather pathetic portrait of our shared human condition. One that closely resembles Taylor Swift’s ex. It tells us that, left to our own devices, we struggle to remain in right relationship with God. For on our own, we cannot divine the will of the Lord. We can’t figure out what God wants. Yet, instead of breaking up with us, God has not only mercifully revealed to us the non-negotiable requirements for relationship, God has also taken steps to help us meet them. By sending us Wisdom and the holy spirit from above, God has straightened our paths, so that we may walk more closely with God. So that we can truly be together.

Revealing to us the requirements for right relationship, and helping us to meet them. Isn’t this what Jesus is doing in the gospel? And yet, at first glance, the requirements he sets may seem far too onerous, even unreasonable. To hate not only the closest members of my family, but even my own life too? To carry my cross, and to give up all my possessions? Surely, any girl making such demands of a boyfriend will end up remaining single for the rest of her life! But God isn’t just any girl. For very shortly, as we do every Sunday, we will profess our common faith in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible… Enlightened by revelation, we believe not only that God is Creator, but also that we are all mere creatures. And a loving relationship between Creator and creature has its proper requirements and repercussions. For if God has created everything, then everything belongs to God. And God deserves first place in our lives and in our hearts. Our primary relationship with God should configure all our other relationships. This is not an unreasonable demand. It flows naturally from who God is, and who we are in relation to God.

But it’s important to bear in mind that, much as God isn’t just another girl, neither are we just any creature. The requirements set by Jesus in the gospel aren't for just any animal, plant or mineral. They are meant for the only creature (we currently know of) capable of becoming a disciple. The only one able to share in Christ’s mission of stewarding the rest of creation back into right relationship. Which is what St Paul is really doing in the second reading. At a time when the unjust institution of slavery was still accepted without question, Paul feels free to ask Philemon to treat Onesimus no longer as just another item of private property, but as an equal, a fellow Christian, a brother in the Lord. In effect, Paul is asking his friend to allow his primary relationship with God to properly configure all his other relationships, including his relationship with his slave.

All of which should help us better appreciate what the Season of Creation is really about. Why should we Christians bother to live more sustainably? To take care to reduce, re-use and recycle? It’s not just because, through generations, human exploitation has pushed Mother Earth to the brink. And stronger, more frequent typhoons, fires and floods are causing much suffering, especially to the most vulnerable. More fundamentally, it’s also because, as disciples of Christ, we are called to allow our primary relationship with the Lord to configure all our other relationships. Not just our relationships with other human beings, including those closest to us, but also our relationships with the rest of God’s creation. It's also because, according to our particular capacities and circumstances in life, we are all called to share in the Lord’s mission of restoring creation to right relationship with God.

Unlike that catchy Taylor Swift song, by setting out those sobering requirements in the gospel, the Lord isn’t really breaking up with us. Rather, he is calling us to rise to the challenge of discipleship. To draw from the graces offered at this Eucharist, and to reclaim our common dignity as stewards of God’s creation. Sisters and brothers, what can we do to help one another live up to this high calling today?

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Breaking News: Ordinary Time

Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, thirty-three or thirty-four weeks remain in the yearly cycle that do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on the Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. This period is known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time begins on Monday after the Sunday following 6 January and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday inclusive. It begins again on Monday after Pentecost and ends before Evening Prayer I of the First Sunday of Advent. ~ General Norms for the Liturgical Year & Calendar, nn 43-44

From 36th Jesuit General Congregation

It is our union with one another in Christ that testifies to the Good News more powerfully than our competences and abilities.... In our individualistic and competitive age, we should remember that the community plays a very special role since it is a privileged place of apostolic discernment.... The Jesuit community is a concrete space in which we live as friends in the Lord. This life together is always at the service of mission, but because these fraternal bonds proclaim the Gospel, it is itself a mission. –Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice (CMRJ), nn. 7-9.

With the poor, we can learn what hope and courage mean.... In our communities and apostolates, we hear the call to rediscover hospitality to strangers, to the young, to the poor, and to those who are persecuted. Christ himself teaches us this hospitality. –CMRJ, nn. 15-16.

At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is the transforming encounter with the mercy of God in Christ that moves us to a generous personal response. The experience of the merciful gaze of God on our weakness and sinfulness humbles us and fills us with gratitude, helping us to become compassionate ministers to all.... For us Jesuits, compassion is action, an action discerned together. Yet we know that there is no authentic familiarity with God if we do not allow ourselves to be moved to compassion and action by an encounter with the Christ who is revealed in the suffering, vulnerable faces of people, indeed in the suffering of creation. –CMRJ, nn. 19-20.

(T)he Society must respond more decisively to the Church’s call for a new evangelization, giving special emphasis to ministry to and with the young and with families.... A special gift Jesuits and the Ignatian family have to offer to the Church and her mission of evangelization is Ignatian spirituality, which facilitates the experience of God and can therefore greatly help the process of personal and communal conversion. –CMRJ, nn. 22-23.

In many societies, there is an increased level of conflict and polarization, which often gives rise to violence that is all the more appalling because it is motivated and justified by distorted religious convictions. In such situations, Jesuits, along with all who seek the common good, are called to contribute from their religious-spiritual traditions towards the building of peace, on local and global levels. –CMRJ, n. 28.

Pope Francis has emphasized the fundamental connection between the environmental crisis and the social crisis in which we live today. Poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization are linked with environmental degradation. These are not separate crises but one crisis that is a symptom of something much deeper: the flawed way societies and economies are organised. The current economic system with its predatory orientation discards natural resources as well as people. For this reason, Pope Francis insists that the only adequate solution must be a radical one. The direction of development must be altered if it is to be sustainable. We Jesuits are called to help heal a broken world, promoting a new way of producing and consuming, which puts God’s creation at the center.... The multifaceted challenge of caring for our common home calls for a multifaceted response from the Society. We begin by changing our personal and community lifestyles, adopting behaviour coherent with our desire for reconciliation with creation. – CMRJ, nn. 29-30

From 35th Jesuit General Congregation

From General Congregation 35

By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.
- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.
- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.
- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.
- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.
- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.
- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.
- Decree on Obedience, n. 19

Sunday, September 07, 2025

Getting Back Together

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